


Bucharest, Romania

by BarnesnMrNoble



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (Non Graphic), Gen, descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 15:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20010481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarnesnMrNoble/pseuds/BarnesnMrNoble
Summary: Plums. All he’d wanted was a few plums to make dinner tonight, but the world had other plans.





	Bucharest, Romania

**Author's Note:**

> The scene rewrite from Civil War that didn’t end up being a rewrite as much as the scene but with an added character. It’s supposed to be a bigger part of the story, but there is a strong bond between Bucky and the reader. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy! If you do, leave a like and a reblog or comment! I’d love to hear what you think and honestly I need the validation.

Plums. All he’d wanted was a few plums to make dinner tonight, but the world had other plans. 

He’d first tensed at the distant sirens, feeling frozen with fear as they grew closer, his mind set that this was the day they came to take away the semblance of peace he’d found in Bucharest. He only marginally relaxed when the sirens passed in a flash in front of his blurred vision. 

He kept his head low, avoiding eye contact as best he could. His heart was hammering at this point, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. Every part of him was in panic mode but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on the why yet. He waited to cross the street, leaning on his toes to be able to take off at a moments notice. 

It was when he met the frantic eyes of a newsstand worker that he knew this day was well and truly going to shit. The man did a double take at Bucky, his eyes growing until he watched Bucky take the first panicked step across the street, then he’d scrambled away from his stand and ran through the crowds. 

Bucky reached a gloved hand out to grab the paper, uncaring of the small lighter that clattered the ground in his haste. The headline yelled at him in big, bold, accusatory letters, and he felt his heart plummet to his feet. 

“WINTER SOLDIER WANTED FOR UN BOMBING” 

His hands shook as he threw the paper back on the counter, he needed to get out of here.

His memories had been shit after hydra, countless hours spent in that godforsaken chair, searing pain that he swore split his skull in half as they tore through his mind, taking away the last things that made him James Buchanan Barnes. But he knew, amidst all the struggle he’d had trying to get them back, he hadn’t been the one to bomb the UN. 

His feet had taken off before he could return function to his brain. He was sprinting down back alleyways, not daring to take the main roads and risk someone seeing him. He was sure there were few people that would ever try to stand in his way if they did recognize him, but he couldn’t take the chance that they would alert police. He needed time and if the police knew he was in Bucharest, all of that would vanish. 

He slid to halt behind his apartment complex, old and run down. If he didn’t know better it might look as if it was about to collapse in on itself. There had been nights that he’d wished it would happen, the early days of finding a hide out in Bucharest. He didn’t wish the pain of its collapse on anyone but himself, hoping that it’s end would mean he was taken away from the pain, the sleepless nights were his mind replayed the screams of those whose lives he so brutally took away, the blood that in the darkness of night, he could still see staining his hands no matter how hard he scrubbed at them. 

He scrambled up the back fire escape, sliding into the back stairwell a few floors down from his. He couldn’t hear much, the piano of a neighbor, running footsteps of the children in the apartment opposite of where he stood. Bucky slid into the main stairwell to reach his front door once he realized the main stairwell had been clear. 

He moved with surprising grace and stealth through the front door of his apartment. Both the lock and door were intact and looked like they hadn’t been tampered with and Bucky let out a relieved sigh and slipped inside. 

The apartment, old and dingy like the outside was basic as he could find. Cheap rent that he could cover with small time jobs that didn’t require dealing with people. He’d managed to find an old mattress that someone in his building had thrown out and managed to snag it before it made it to the dumpster. They’d also been throwing out a threadbare blanket and a few pillows and Bucky had snagged those as well. 

He had built up a few shelves along the side wall, extra storage for when he might need it besides the newspapers that sat there now. Not that he’d need it now if he was back to running. The kitchen was bare, just like the rest of his apartment, only holding the things needed to make basic meals. He’d stashed a few journals on top of the refrigerator, filled with memories and thoughts.

His blood turned cold when he walked far enough into his apartment to see someone standing in his kitchen. The red, white and blue suit was one he’d remembered from several different occasions of his past. He remembered him from the fight in D.C., and remembered what had been written about him in the Smithsonian exhibit. Steve was his name. He wasn’t a direct threat, but he was connected to and worked for people who were. 

Bucky nearly collapsed with relief when he saw the one thing that panicked him more than anything, more than he himself being captured and framed for a bombing he had no part in. 

When he’d escaped hydra the few years ago, he’d been a mess of himself, his brain stuck in the instinctual ways they’d programmed into him, looking over his shoulder with every step he took waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for them to come back and say those goddamn words that took away his free will, that took away Bucky Barnes and replaced him with The Asset, the Winter Soldier, that replaced him with HYDRA’s puppet. 

But he hadn’t been the only one. He’d seen her for the years leading up. Heard her scream, watched her body convulse the same way as his always did and they pushed a deadly amount of voltage coursing through her veins, lighting them with the lightning that powered their missions. He’d been sent on the odd mission with her, ones that required more than one set of hydra’s fist, assassinations of high ranking political figures, that needed more finesse rather than brute strength. They worked well and the asset had taken a liking to her. 

That seemed to have extended further than just the asset, seated deep into his roots. When Bucky has been running through the maze of halls, trying to find he way to the freedom he so desperately craved and deserved, he’d seen her. Her presence tugged at him, told him to stop his frantic escape and drag her along with him. And so he did. She’d just arrived back at the base and had been poorly treated for her wounds, her leg had been the worst of it, the broken bone not reset and ready to heal in the worst and most painful way. 

He grabbed her and ran. He ran until they found a space to hide in the dense Russian forest, ran until he felt the slightest relief of the fear they’d instilled upon him. It wasn’t until Bucharest that he’d found it for the both of them, and now that was gone. 

Her body was tucked in the back corner of the small bathroom inside the apartment. She’d made herself small, hidden, something Bucky wished he could do some days but found it a struggle with his large and bulky stature. Steve, the man standing in front on his fridge, reading the journals of his memories, hadn’t seen him yet and Bucky couldn’t lie that he was grateful for that. 

He nodded to her and her body relaxed minutely. It was a silent conversation between the two of them, one they had long since known was going to happen. The plan was to be enacted but she was stubborn like Bucky had always known her to be and even though his first and most important priority was her safety, her was his safety. There was no way she was leaving without him. No way she was escaping whatever the situation was without him by her side. It was a non starter. 

Bucky cursed under his breath when he shifted on his feet and the floorboard freaked just loud enough to grab Steve’s attention. He was hoping for just a little bit longer to devise a plan, to figure what direction this interaction was going to go. 

Bucky’s heart nearly thudded straight from his chest when Steve turned around. His breathing picked up and his anxiety and panic that had been building in these last two years on the run, all surfaces at once. It sent Bucky into a dangerous spiral of thoughts, and Bucky managed to school his features to hide this winces of pain as new and old memories alike started coming back, brutally punching at his brain. 

It all happened pretty quickly after that, Bucky denied any involvement in the bombing and much to his surprise, Steve knew and was trying to help escape. Bucky wouldn’t let him, he was too connected. Had too much involvement with people who didn’t care that Bucky’s been a POW, who held little sympathy and only wanted a face to blame and a body to throw in a cell. 

He had contingencies, plans in place for whatever happened when this day inevitably came. Everything in the apartment had been strategically set up to give him a way out. For all the atrocities Hydra committed to Bucky, he was at least grateful for the ability to always be prepared, to have a way out should anything ever go south. It was handy when you were on the run from multiple organizations. 

He could just make out the shapes of swat officers surrounding the building on the rooftops of building across from him. He could hear the heavy, pounding of several officers rushing up the stairs and their guns cocking, readying themselves for whatever came. 

“This doesn’t have to end in a fight, Buck.”

That line, the unwillingness to ever stand down, to ever give up, it all struck something within Bucky. He was flooded with another memory, one of the skinny blonde boy he’d seen a few times when he recalled old memories. God, even now it was hard to resist the urge to roll his eyes at his unending morals. 

But Bucky knew, no matter what, it would always end in a fight. He slid the glove of his metal hand, flexing the fingers a few times to regain the dexterity after keeping it so stiff and tense. 

And then shit hit the fan.

Steve’s eyes flew to the window, and Bucky’s followed. The flash bang bounced off Steve’s shield, as a second one thudded in the floor near Bucky’s feet. And with an action and silent conversation that, to an outsider, would look like that of a a partnership that had been working together for years, Bucky kicked the charge to Steve who trapped it beneath his shield. While he was distracted, Bucky took a step back and banged on the bathroom door. 

It was time to go whether they wanted to or not. 

She emerged from the bathroom looking every bit the part of the soldier and asset she once was. Her shoulders were stiff and her muscles tense, but yet, she still moved through the room with a dexterity that someone as stiff as she’d become shouldn’t be able to do. 

They worked around each other like they had been attached at the hip. The fighting styles screamed similarity, a well oiled machine pumping out power packed punch after punch. She was graceful, stealthy but powerful. Bucky was her counterpart in every way, still powerful, not more so but in a different way. In a way of brute strength, a weight behind his punches that few others would ever be able to replicate. 

In a non combative, training scenario, Steve might have found it mesmerizing. A history between the two that begged to be unearthed and explained. He did have a moment of pause, watching they way they worked with each other and then worked within the confines of the apartment. Using the strategically placed furniture to their advantage, to block doors and the rain of bullets fired through the windows. 

The flurry of movements and steady stream of bodies rushing into the fight had started to trickle down, though they were far from over. 

Her and Bucky steadily moved back towards the back door. They had hidden two go-bags underneath a sectioning of flooring days after having moved in to the shitty apartment. They knew this would happen and they would be uprooted from what little peace’s they’d come to find. 

They moved as fluidly together as they had in the apartment as they broke through the waves of officers trying, however stupidly to stop them. Neither cared much for the safety of those that came at them, despite the annoyed looks Steve gave them. 

Bucky restrained himself from feeling any relief that had finally made it low enough to safely jump the gap between their building and their only chance at escape. He wasn’t really sure how he managed it, but somewhere the soldiers instincts must’ve taken over. They jumped across the ledge and Bucky reached out to grab on to her body and pull her into his, knowing that his serum enhanced body could handle the brunt of a fall like that, where hers could not. 

While she’d been an asset, wiped and trained like he had, they had never administered any type of their bastardized serum. He never really knew why, what benefit did it keep to have her not hopped up on the serum. Though then, he hadn’t really questioned it but just knew she hadn’t received it. 

They landed heavy, Bucky landing with most of the combined weight on his cybernetic arm. It hurt like a bitch, the limb already hurting from his fighting and the dumb decision he’d made to drop four flights and catch the railing on his way out. They stood quickly, Bucky only able to take seconds to check her for injury before the daunting shadow of a new threat descended upon them. 

They both took of at a dead sprint, following the predetermined route until they were eventually caught, thrown from the bike they’d grabbed to gain more distance. The squealing of tires, and the clash of a suit hitting heavy against the roadway burned in his ears, in his heart. Because he knew this was the end of their peace, the end of what little freedom they’d found after so many years of captivity. He felt even worse knowing he’d failed in his one goal of protecting her, the person he’d practically adopted to seek shelter under his umbrella of protectiveness. That if he hadn’t been so afraid to admit in fear of losing it all, (like he was) would be like his little sister. He still couldn’t get over how much she reminded him of Becca. 

And to think, this whole thing had started with a trip to the market, for six measly plums to make them dinner.


End file.
